Джек Макдевитт - Chindi

“That’s the same question Hutch asked. I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing to measure it against out here. Give me a little time.”

The shuttle had disconnected itself and was rotating to come after them. “Don’t need it,” she said. “It’ll take too long.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” She looked up at Claymoor. For a long moment they simply floated there, while he watched the McCarver continue to dwindle. Then she told him to hang on, suggested he watch his foot, and lighted her go-pack. It was maybe a one-second burst and it jolted him because it had more kick than he’d expected, but they were headed back toward the airlock.

FOR BROWNSTEIN, IT had been a frantic experience. He was engaged in an exercise that put the yacht at risk. He wasn’t sure what his status would be if it sustained damage. Engines were not cheap. And he’d come within a hair of losing one of his passengers, and then had seen his prime-time star jump out of the airlock.

He’d been piloting superluminals for more than twenty years, first for LightTek, then for Kosmik, and finally for Universal News. And in the last ten minutes he’d watched his entire career pass before his eyes.

He hadn’t violated the code. In fact, refusal to help Hutch recover her own lost passenger could have left him open to legal action. At the same time, he could get into serious trouble for putting his ship in jeopardy. Law, as it applied off-Earth, was a confusing and sometimes contradictory business. (There were those who maintained that was nothing new in jurisprudence.)

Nevertheless, he was still trying to settle his own nerves when Claymoor reported that they were both back aboard. He activated the visuals as they came through the airlock and saw that Hutch looked a little beat-up. Bruises and broken blood vessels were evident. Of course, one would expect that of somebody who, in the last few minutes, had twice been breathing vacuum.

“We have acquired the chindi,” said Jennifer.

He took a deep breath. “Status?”

She put it on the display board. They were behind the chindi, as they’d hoped they would be.

And they were moving slightly faster than.26c!

Incredible. Hutch had been right, and they’d effectively scored a bull’s-eye. In almost every way. But he’d been in the sack a bit too long. They were closer than they wanted to be and had to shed more velocity than had been planned.

The AI had already begun rotating the McCarver, pointing its thrusters forward.

“We’ll reach it in twenty-six minutes, Yuri. But we’ll need a twenty-two-minute burn to overtake and match velocity.”

Twenty-two minutes? With engines already red-hot? The plan had called for seven or eight. “Hutch,” he said, “we have a problem.”

BROWNSTEIN’S NEWS HAD, on the whole, been encouraging. Greenwater had worked, and now they had a decent chance.

Hutch was still somewhat shaken up. The first thing she did on returning to the yacht was to gargle and brush her teeth. She did that on the run, with a lot of spilled water, while the ship maneuvered into braking position. It stopped, started, realigned. Pointed its main thrusters forward.

She grabbed a clean blouse from her bag and hurried half-dressed to the bridge, arriving just before the fusion engines came back on line and fired.

Claymoor, looking every bit the heroic male, was already there. His voice seemed to have deepened. He was enjoying his moment, and she saw him looking surreptitiously through the Mac’s visuals of the incident. Some of that was undoubtedly going to show up on the UNN coverage.

Yuri shook her hand and congratulated her, but his mood was subdued. On the console beside the navigation screen the engine warning lights were already blinking.

She was in the right-hand seat. “Can you patch me through to the chindi, Yuri?” she asked. “I want to talk to Tor.”

They were still pretty far away. “Can he reply at this range?” he asked.

“No. But I can talk to him.”

“Go ahead, Hutch. You’re on.”

“Tor,” she said, “if you can hear me, we’re less than a half hour away.” She checked the time. He should be all right for another hour or so.

She chattered away at him, trying to stay upbeat, describing how the jump had been perfect, how the transit had worked, how they’d dumped the mass but kept the velocity and roared out of hyperspace. How they were coming. Almost there. We’ll not do any more wandering off onto alien artifacts, will we? Especially ones with big propulsion tubes.

“In about fifteen minutes,” she said, “we’ll be within your transmission range. You’ll be able to talk to us.”

Claymoor nodded approvingly. “If I ever get in trouble,” he said, “I hope you’re with the rescue party.”

She smiled with all due modesty.

“You could have killed yourself out there.”

“I’m responsible for him.”

“Only up to a point.” He tilted his head, appraising her. “Anybody ever try that before? Staying outside during a jump?”

Brownstein looked back over his shoulder. “Nobody else that crazy,” he said.

“And I didn’t get any pictures.”

“Sure you did,” said Hutch.

“Not of you during the jump.” His eyes narrowed. “You know, I’ll bet if we check the hull imagers, we might find something.”

“Henry,” she said, “you pulled my rear end out of the fire out there, and I wouldn’t want you to think I’m not grateful.”

“But…?”

“But you’re probably right, and I’m sure there is a visual record of me throwing up and all the rest of it.”

“It’s great stuff, Hutch. Nobody expects you to maintain appropriate decorum in that kind of situation.”

“I’m not talking about decorum. I’m talking about how I looked. I don’t want the world to see me like that and I’d appreciate—” She stopped dead, listening. The gee-forces were gone.

“What’s wrong?” asked Claymoor.

They both answered: “The engines are off.”

“Automatic shutdown.” Jennifer’s voice. “To prevent damage.”

“How long will they stay shut down?” Hutch asked.

“Minimum time’s about twenty minutes,” he said.

“That’s way too long. Can you override?”

“This is not one of the designated situations, Hutch.”

“Who the hell cares? We can explain later.”

“Jennifer cares. She won’t allow it.”

“Goddam, Yuri. Override her.”

“It’ll take too much time.”

Claymoor was looking from one to the other. “What does it mean?” he asked.

“It means,” said Hutch, “that we’ll go roaring past the chindi with all flags flying.”

THE SKY HAD not changed. The stars didn’t move, didn’t rotate past as they seemed to do from Iowa. Everything stayed in precisely the same place. Frozen. Nothing rose and nothing set. Time had simply stopped.

Except for the oxygen gauge, which stood at fifty minutes.

Hurry, Hutch.

Eventually, maybe years from now, someone else would find his shelter, and he wondered what they would make of it. A display out in one of the corridors? Or maybe the robots would eventually clean it up and get rid of it. Or might they set it up in a chamber of its own, complete with an image of himself? Did they recognize that artifacts might come on board of their own volition?

He considered yet again how best to end things when the time came. He didn’t want to smother.

He could shut off the suit, but he wasn’t sure the effect wouldn’t be much the same. He remembered seeing pictures of a woman whose suit had failed, the only known case, and it was clear she’d died in agony.